love, therapy, cliches (i)

I tell my therapist, I feel so stupid. I always love those I cannot love. Miss those who do not miss me. Give so much to those to whom I don't matter.



It's a curse. The consequence of my mad history. A branding. Over the years, I feel it has become my fate. He says, but it is not fate, and because I have recogized that it is not fate that I am here, I want to change. I say, it feels good to love someone, even if it is a no good love. I would rather have my heart ache than have it not feel at all. When I feel love, I feel inspired, beautiful, full of gloriousness. Life is fast, is slow, it doens't matter, because I am in tune with it. He reminds me, but the other side of it is, you feel bad about yourself, you feel insecure, tormented by doubts and fear of rejection and abandonment. I say, yes, but who cares, when I'm in love, I have love, you know what I mean. He says, but that's why you're here, right? because you want to change the way you fall in love? I didn't know what to say. Wasn't sure if this was true. Did I want to change it? Do I still? Maybe I did. But I"m thinking I don't anymore. I tell him, I'm not sure I want to change. I tell him, but don't you see, that's just how my heart is. Then I thought, how cliche, right? How cliche, to say, "that's just how my heart is." There are other things I say during my therapy sessions that are cliche too. Like, when I cry and cry and cry because he's leaving in June and won't be my therapist anymore after June. To counter the feeling of abandonment, I tell him, I'm leaving first. I'm not coming to therapy anymore. Today is my last day. I come up with a good-bye gift. That's very cliche. I also say, I don't know about you, but I will be taking home a basket of missing today. That's even more cliche. He says, when he thinks about me, he will think about all the work that I've done, how much I've changed since therapy started. I want to tell him, I don't want him to think about my progress. I haven't made much progress at all. I want him to think about me, as I am in front of him, just like that, just as I am, crying and wondering and sad and excited and lost as I follow the thickened fog this spring that came too early or is it winter that never arrived. I want to tell him, I haven't figured out how it is that I feel so bad about myself so often, why is it I don't think I deserve to be loved even while I want it all the time, or what could have happened to cause a person so much hurt. I want to say, we haven't figured all that out yet, you can't go, because if you do, I will have no one else to do the listening, to ask me what I'm thinking and pay attention as I tell them about the morning light and its gullibility. And then who will ask me about my day, tell me I'm alright when I think I'm crazy, say words that normalize my silences and get me to talk instead of choking my feelings back and then explode. I am going to miss our sessions, I tell him, when instead what I really want to say is that I will miss him. Miss him as he is and him as my therapist. Of course I don't know him as anyone else other than my therapist. I haven't seen him laugh or cry or get angry. I haven't seen him sad except when he is sad for me. I haven't seen him smile except when I made the joke. I havent' seen him lazy, asleep, or hungry. I haven't seen him dirty or smelly or scratching his nose. No, I haven't seen any of the important stuff, but still, I feel like I recognize him, as he sits in front of me each week, as he struggles to be my therapist and searches through his schooling and training for words to say to me, except those words dont sound like they come from the books, they sound like they come from his heart, his real heart, the heart I want to know. When I get that heavy feeling that comes as certain and stubborn as I am, even if I don't know what I am most days, or when I have a small reason to be excited, he's the only person I want to call. I call and say, hey, guess what happened, I've been offered a job, or hey, I'm so bummed, people were mean to me today. Then he calls me and leaves me a message, hi, I got your call, I'm sorry you're upset, but I"m glad you think of me as a resource. I listen to his message and is crushed. I don't want him to be my resource. I tell him, I don't like that word, I wasn't calling a resource. I was calling a friend. He says something about of course, he understands the difficulty... but I am not listening, because what he has to say does not please me. I tell him, I feel like I'm eight again, crying because I thought my best friend had become somebody else's best friend, or when my parents went and left me behind, it's stupid. He tells me, it's not stupid, Quan. I don't believe him, but I like the way he says my name.

to my friends who are in vn right now

please stop by and light
a stick of incense for my  father.
he was my father, you know, for so many years.
tell him i am sorry
i am not there
to carry his framed
bony sunken face,
his love burrowed deep as purple yam
summers, morning walks to the coffee shop high
on his shoulders, autumn festivals made bright with cheap cinder sticks.

tell him i cannot
come because there are children
who need their mother i
cannot leave them like he left us
our somnolent childhood wandering
the streets drenched in afternoon sun.
tell him, sometimes i get mixed up, the skies
here and in bien hoa, why i drive the road like a drug,
it helps me get home, even
if i don't know where home is.

tell him that

but i guess it doesn't matter now, death is
the great disambiguator sweeping memories into an urn.
that's it. say nothing.
just light the incense, and give him a kiss
goodbye.

(for my fathers, dad and ông bảy)